EEOC charges exploded last year as pandemic eased and employees returned to work.

EEOC charges soared in fiscal year 2022, jumping almost 20% compared to FY 2021 and reversing a 10-year trend in which discrimination, harassment and retaliation claims steadily declined.

Blame much of the spike on employees returning to in-person work following pandemic-era lockdowns in 2020 and 2021. With more employees working face-to-face again, bias charges and related claims were bound to increase.

The latest EEOC charge statistics--released June 5 and covering the 12 months between Oct. 1, 2021, and Sept. 30, 2022--represent the largest year-over-year percentage increase since FY 1997, when the EEOC began using its current system to track charge data.

In all, the EEOC handled 73,485 claims in FY 2022, an increase of more than 12,000 over the 2021 total.

Even so, EEOC charges remained well below the all-time high of 99,947 set in FY 2011.

Top charge: Retaliation

Retaliation was again by far the most common complaint (37,898), 10% more than in FY 2021. Retaliation was cited in 52% of all EEOC claims. Retaliation charges rarely stand alone. They almost always accompany claims that allege some form of discrimination on the basis of a protected class, too.

Of all claims filed, 24,430 included a harassment charge, 33% more than in 2021. Sexual harassment charges increased 11%.

For the fourth year in a row, disability discrimination was the most common protected-class bias charge, with 25,004 complaints making up 34% of EEOC charges.

For decades, race discrimination was the most common EEOC complaint. Sex discrimination briefly gained the top spot in FY 2018. The next year, disability bias became the most common charge.

Alleged violations of the Equal Pay Act and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act accounted for an additional 1,399 charges.

Effects of the...